Liberal Tears

Well, this election was a disappointment. But honestly, how could anyone have foreseen that a mixed-race woman married to a Jew might come in second to a white man? Well, I’m a white man and can pass for MAGA if I keep my mouth shut, so I’ll be okay. What, too honest?

I’m guessing Latino and Muslim Americans who voted for Trump think their U.S. citizenship will protect them. I hope for their sake they’re right. I don’t know what the hell white women who voted for him were thinking. I’m just as bewildered by that as I was when he “won” in 2016.

This time around, with both the electoral and popular vote on his side, I guess I’ll have to call him president, something I never did before. That’s about as gracious in defeat as I’m going to be.

As for the ray of hope many see in the several states where propositions protecting reproductive rights passed, remember Ohio, where just two years ago voters enshrined a right to abortion in the state constitution and the Republican legislature set right to work end-running the will of the people? What makes you think a federal abortion ban isn’t in the cards?

To Elon Musk, who probably thinks he’s going to be the power behind the throne, I’d just ask him to name one time when Trump willingly shared the spotlight with someone else.

As for mass deportations, I read this morning that stocks in private prisons are soaring. Jesus Christ.

Well, enough grousing. As Kamala says, the fight goes on.

I logged onto the local public library website yesterday to put a book on hold, then logged out when I was done. It hit me that I never bother to sign out after visiting other sites. I figure they’ll log me off automatically after sensing my absence, and if they don’t, well, I won’t have to sign in next time I drop by. But librarians, man … they deserve a little respect, and I always log in and out like a good citizen. I shared this observation on Facebook, where a friend reminded me how important it is to sign out after doing business on banking and financial websites, and I’m like yeah, that seems like sound advice.

Also shared on Facebook: my second departure from Twitter. I closed my account last year when Musk took over, then came back. People who don’t use Twitter may not understand how different it is from Facebook, where you interact with friends and relatives. On Twitter, you pick and choose people and accounts to follow, mostly complete strangers. In my case, I used Twitter to follow working journalists, authors and bloggers, environmental activists, and people with shared interests in animals, opposition to book-banning, and military aviation. I was there for the news, inside information, and insights they’d post.

Sadly, while a lot of users like me left for Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky, most of the folks who made Twitter worthwhile stayed put, not willing to lose the tens of thousands of followers they’d built up over the years. I missed them on the new sites, so two months back I signed up for a new Twitter account and started following them again. They’re still there, but while I was away Musk must have tinkered with the algorithm. Now, even with the Twitter feed set to “following” (the filter that’s supposed to limit it to posts from those you follow), I have to wade through bleed-over from the racists, MAGAts, Pizzagate nuts, anti-vaxxers, Russian disinformation influencers, and outright Nazis who infest the general public feed. Twitter ain’t what it used to be, and now that Elon Musk is so closely allied with Trump who knows how much worse it’s going to get? It’s time to leave. This time for good.

Sharing these thoughts about Twitter with my little Facebook friends prompted a few to share how virtuous they are for never having been on Twitter in the first place. Good on them, I guess. But then why are they on Facebook, which is now as bad as Twitter, if they’re so above it all? Huh?

Stay fresh, cheese bags. And keep fighting.